Saturday, April 22, 2006

Press Releases

The Data Port regularly receives press releases from three of the CD-8 campaigns…Latas, Weiss and Giffords. Generally these releases fall still born from the press, or from the printer, or out of the e-mail in box, or what have you. The daily papers file them in the circular file.

I suppose that if they do anything they encourage each candidate’s enthusiasts, or help to define some talking point for the campaign, but so far as practical political action is concerned they are
probably worthless.

The general expression of shock and dismay over some perfectly obvious disease of the body politic, and the call for ‘immediate action’ by Congress, is hokum. We aren’t told something we don’t know and no action, immediate or otherwise, is likely to result.


A clever exception to press release tedium came out of the Weiss Campaign recently. It was a press release in which Weiss took on one of the potential Republican candidates, pointing out how the candidate had “flip-flopped.” I thought this was really clever. It gave us some information that we might not have otherwise had and it positioned Weiss as assuming her own victory and already on the campaign trail against a possible opponent.

It got my attention. It’s a good strategy. As long as you are going to float press releases you might just as well take the opportunity to flog some CD-8 Republican.

(In the process of switching e-mail programs I stupidly lost this press release. Perhaps someone will post it as a comment.)



Purely Personal

The Borderlands Theatre production of “Conjunto” opened last night. You can read all about the production here. Getting ready for the opening turned my normal schedule on its head, keeping me up later at night than usual and generally playing hob with my sleep schedule and my blogging routine.

Happily the pot has been kept bubbling in the comments threads.

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